On Jan. 1, 2012, shortly after taking power, Kim Jong Un visited the offices of Rodong Sinmun – the country’s most prominent newspaper – and called for strengthening loyalty toward the Workers’ Party of Korea while praising the newspaper’s journalists as “precious treasures of the party.”
After that, the Central Committee’s Propaganda and Agitation Department instructed workers, journalists, and writers of both central and provincial newspapers on the kind of attitudes they should have, and began extensive individual ideological examinations of all staff. This was a kind of trial by fire to determine who deserved to serve as the voice of the regime’s propaganda in the new Kim Jong Un era.
One journalist skirts the rules
In 2013, Moon, a man in his fifties, was working for the Rodong Sinmun as a journalist when he failed the ideological exam. He was demoted first to a position at the Minju Choson newspaper, then to a local newspaper in South Pyongan Province. Eventually, he ended up on the watch list of the Ministry of State Security.
It is difficult to become a journalist in North Korea, but even those who manage to enter the field can only write articles that reflect the ideology and policies of the WPK. North Korean journalists must accept their fate: they cannot and should not write the articles they want to write.
The once principled and outspoken Moon was forced to leave for the Minju Choson newspaper after the WPK’s ideological review in mid-2012 concluded that he was “too outspoken.” However, he did not like how territorial Minju Choson was, so he found himself at the South Pyongan Province newspaper.
There was only one reason why Moon was considered too outspoken: He often complained that even if he wrote an article according to the standards of the WPK, the quality and content would be undermined by the 12-step censorship procedures. His complaints caused friction between him and the paper’s management.
For example, Moon wrote several stories about inmates in reeducation camps across the country who would be granted a special pardon on the 100th anniversary of the Day of the Sun (Kim Il Sung’s birthday on Apr. 15), but the editors rejected all of them and not a single article was published. The editors said that they could not print stories about people with criminal backgrounds in a party newspaper.
Undaunted, Moon sent several articles about the ecstatic prisoners released from reeducation camps by the special pardons to an acquaintance at a provincial newspaper. However, these articles were not published either, and Moon despaired at the realization that there was a limit to the kind of material that could be printed in a WPK newspaper and at the role of journalists in North Korean society.
Eventually, the outspoken Moon was deemed a “dangerous reactionary” and removed from his position. The key factor that landed him in a political prison camp run by the Ministry of State Security was that after he was demoted to the South Pyongan Province newspaper, he collected various materials while researching topics not assigned to him by his editors.
The main subjects of his writings were former prisoners who had been released from prison, and his reports focused on the tone and personalities of the judges who oversaw their cases. Moon saw the attitude of these judges as a serious problem that created gaps between the Workers’ Party and the people it governed, and he tried to dig up more information for his investigation.
Although he could not publish his writings through his newspaper, Moon thought he could help resolve these issues by informing a trusted Central Committee official he had known during his time at Rodong Sinmun.
A serious mistake
But Moon overlooked something. The judges had gotten wind that he was going around and talking to those who testified that they had been harmed by the judges and that he was compiling documentation of their behavior. From the judges’ point of view, Moon was a serious problem, and he was eventually denounced as a spy.
The Ministry of State Security arrested Moon for collecting documents for his articles and accused him of planning to give his materials to the “puppets” in South Korea. The state security agency told the Party Committee of the South Pyongan Province Newspaper that it had arrested him “for committing the heinous act of infiltrating the ranks of journalists who serve as the voice of the Workers’ Party in order to collect information and engage in espionage.”
North Korean authorities later included Moon’s story in ideological training materials for journalists, branding him a spy and claiming, “Some ne’er-do-wells of a certain era failed to develop revolutionary discipline and disregarded the party’s ideological teachings. They entered the ranks of journalists, corrupted the party’s policies, and sunk so low as to act in the service of our enemies.”
Moon ended up in a political prison camp for trying to use his journalistic sensibilities to shed light on corruption. His story illustrates the state of journalism in North Korea. Even now, North Korea shields the eyes and ears of its citizens by demanding journalists’ undying loyalty to the WPK and the Supreme Leader under the names of the “Newspaper Revolution,” “Reporting Revolution,” “Broadcasting Revolution,” and “Publication Revolution. All this is to ensure that journalists remain nothing more than stooges of the government.
In July, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) included Kim Jong Un in its list of 37 “Predators of Press Freedom,” emphasizing that Kim “restricts the media to providing content that praises the party, the military, and himself.” This is precisely why North Korea consistently ranks near the bottom of RSF’s World Press Freedom Index.
Translated by Audrey Gregg. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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February 26, 2024 at 01:10PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)